Psychopathological Perspectives

PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES HARRY F. HARLOW and MELINDA A. NOVAK* Within the short temporal span of only 2,500 years significant gains have been made in the diagnosis, classification, and treatment of varied mental disorders. No longer is hysteria a wondering of the wanton womb, as decribed by Aesculapius, but instead it is a conversion neurosis. What has transpired over the last 2,500 years is that the interpretation has changed. It is not the physical disorder which has produced the psychic suffering; it is the psychic suffering that has been converted into the physical disorder. The Greeks also recognized depression, and from time to time they had good reason to be depressed. However, the Greeks had no patented pills to alleviate their suffering. Today we have a wealth of patented pills, and some of the best abbreviate the period of suffering , whether or not they alleviate the pangs of suffering. We also have electroconvulsive shock, but no physician would engage in a treatment so shocking. However, it is medically acceptable if the treatment is called "electroconvulsive therapy." Shock is sadistic, but therapy is therapeutic. Quoting Shakespeare, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." We also have various verbal therapies which are as powerful curative agents for the alleviation of depression as is spontaneous remission. Retrospectively, the brief and bewildered pictures which we have just painted are the perspectives of the past. The time-honored techniques of research and rescue will with good reason be used throughout the foreseeable future, but there is also reason to believe that they will be supplemented—and to a considerable extent superseded —by perspectives apparent at the present but only faintly fathomed for the future. * University of Wisconsin Primate Laboratory, 22 North Charter Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. This research was supported by U.S. Public Health Service grants MH-11894, MH-18070, and RR-00167 from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Wisconsin Primate Laboratory and Regional Primate Research Center, respectively. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1973 | 461 Research in psychopathology has gone far, and it will continue to go farther. The major psychoses are so disparate and dour, so bedeviled and destructive, that research on any kind of subject is justified , and mortal men of anguish and agony have often been the subjects of choice. However, since it is for the most part ethically impossible to perform the manipulations necessary to delineate the factors involved in the etiology of human psychopathology, many researchers have turned with perfect propriety to the study of the development of psychopathology in nonhuman primates. The study of simian psychopathology involves the manipulation of possible etiological factors, the characterization of the psychopathology that is induced by these factors, and comparison of the behavioral changes in the monkey with behavioral aberrations in the human. Even though there are limitations to the use of nonhuman subjects in psychopathological research, the limitations are not as loathsome as indicated by Kubie [ 1 ] who did not believe that subhuman primates were suitable subjects for psychopathological research. This is Kubie's absolute right, but we hope that he is absolutely wrong. Subhuman Animals as Psychopathological Research Subjects In most medical fields, exploratory and even definitive research is conducted on subhuman animals. This is accepted and acceptable if proper care, caution, and control are conducted to prevent animal abuse and affliction beyond the discomfiture which the disease entails . Platitudes rather than prudence have restricted the use of subhuman animals as subjects for psychopathological research. One of the problems in the use of nonhuman animals for psychopathological research results from the common assumption that there cannot be madness without mentality, and certainly not human madness without human mentality. Diagnosis of human madness in terms of the classifications convenient for humans is difficult to make for human morons, idiots, and imbeciles. This does not mean that human imbeciles and idiots do not have human psychoses. They suffer from communication problems similar to subhuman animals. Perhaps behavioral studies of subhuman animals will reveal what the psychopathologies of humans really are, and this alone would be progress beyond the programs of Aesculapius. Similarly, it should be 462 I Harry F. Harlow and Melinda A...